TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS - Complete collection: Series 1, 2 and 3 - 4 discs DVD Box set [IMPORT]

The TV series stays very true to the essential message of Delderfield's book: the concept of dedicated teaching in private education - despite the necessary cynical counterpoint provided by some characters. All are well-drawn and John Duttine is excellent as the working-class (Welsh mining family) history teacher who returns badly-affectd by the war in the trenches to find himself in a rural Devon idyll. The DVD set moves quite quickly over a long period of years and it is fascinating to see the young David Powlett-Jones gradually become a worthy successor to his mentor, the excellent Frank Middlemass as the headmaster.

I dimly remembered watching this series when I was 13 years old & being hooked on it. Thirty years later however & I couldn't really recall the story at all which is why I recently decided to buy the book. And the book was wonderful. So good that I re-read it immediately.

I promptly bought the dvd issue afterwards so I could watch the series and compare it straight away to the book.

Firstly the good bits.

Howarth is not how I imagined him to be in writing (which is my fault) but he was brilliantly portrayed none the less by Alan MacNaughton. The casting of the John Duttine as Davy Powlett-Jones, the main character, is absolutely spot on and similarly the casting of Frank Middlemass as the headmaster, Algy Herries couldn't be better. And, best of all, Belinda Lang is quite perfect as Beth.

The series is divided into 13 episodes and the first 5 episodes (up till the last few minutes) are an excellent adaption of the book. Everything is near enough perfect and it was wonderful to watch them all. But after that...

The timeline goes completely off. The awful tragedy occurs in the book when the twins are five years old but, in the film, the tragedy occurs when they are babies. And, even more starkly, both girls die with their mother in the film when, in the book, one of the twins survives. This may have helped with the casting issues (& Grace is not one of the best written characters in the book) but Grace's survival is one of the main reasons why Davy remains at Balmfylde and is able to pull through his despair and remain there where the memory of Beth is ever present.

Davy has two more relationships with women in the rest of the story &, again, the film veers way too far from the book. Julia Darbyshire is given far too much prominence in the film when, in the book, her role is more-or-less as an agent of catharsis - an important character but not such a major part as portrayed in the film.
The casting of Susan Jameson as Christine (Davy's second wife) just doesn't work for me. Compared to the book she is far too unsympathetic, too hard &, quite frankly, not attractive enough to be a believable partner for Davy. This really lets the third part of the film down.

The film remained faithful to the book up to near Beth's death but after that its jumps forward chronologically are quite erratic and the sceenplay leaves out some very important and moving parts which I find quite awful considering the film starts out so well as a faithful adaptation of the book.

I've given the series a three-star rating purely for the first five episodes (which, on their own, easily warrant a five-star rating). The last nine episodes however are a grave disappointment & while I've read the whole book twice straightaway and will read it through again soon, I will watch the first five episodes of the dvd time-and-time again but will not bother anymore with the last nine anymore. Which is a shame.

A must add addition to any historical BBC Drama series collection. This was truly a great piece of television and is timeless.